England make Thomas Tuchel ‘wearily disgusted’ but it’s all fine | OneFootball

Here we go again. The frustration, the anger, the disappointment, the boredom about England. It has happened at almost every tournament. What did you expect?

It’s all unfolding within its usual parameters. About half an hour of good football in three games. The rest has been four long hours of slow, unimaginative, grinding performances during which you lost the will to live, where the players looked actively stupid at this soccerball thing, as they turn and pass it sideways at walking pace to the fury of their manager, seemingly unaware of the feeling of sporting turpitude that overcomes everyone.

It will all take them as far as a really good side, when we’ll lose. That’s how it goes, how it always goes. It’s immutable. Have you not noticed?

Why would you think any different? And how desperately unoriginal it is to think if only the person that wasn’t picked was picked, it would have made the difference. You can never prove that anymore than I can prove they wouldn’t because they’re all inculcated into the same culture, which is probably why it gets said. But I do know the reason they were not picked was because they were regularly underwhelming in an England shirt. And you’re asking me to believe this time they would be different? Hope over experience. Naivety.

It’s surprising many seem not to have understood the nature of England. Hope is natural, but there seems little to be gained by lying to ourselves.. On what basis did you think it would somehow be different?

If you’ve not heard it, I recommend David Baddiel’s radio series ‘60 years of hurt’.

It deals with the psychology of much of this, at the bottom of which is a misplaced belief that the players are better than they really are when stripped of their stellar non-English teammates, and that this is part of an English exceptionalism which many if not all of us have grown up with. You don’t have a choice, it’s in every aspect of life. And the echoes of the psychology of colonialism aren’t far away, either. It requires a conscious decoupling in order to see it clearly.

Add to this the endless bulls**it marketing of the Premier League as the very best football has to offer, which creates heroes whose status unfairly exceeds their talent. This nuanced truth is easily ignored when they command such large fees and astronomical wages, but the clubs are essentially buying a different player to the one that plays for England. One to fit into a team of all-stars surrounded by higher quality. This is why they receive the vaunting of characteristics as world class which absolutely aren’t world-class characteristics.

At times, given the emotional spasms the games invoke, I think glorious failure is actually preferred to victory. Grievance is certainly a lot of people’s politics de jour and England losing fits right in with their endlessly deluded world view where nothing is as good as it once was. But the truth is always much more multi-layered and nuanced.

England players are obviously good, sometimes great, just consistently not quite good enough to win, and that should be obvious. The truth stares us in the face at every tournament, even when we have the luck of the draw and get to a final.

It’s not all bad, but bad enough often enough to annoy people, but we should have accepted the proof with our own eyes by now. The innate nature of England players born into our football culture means no manager, let alone a German, can change it. That’s why the usually quite camp Thomas Tuchel frequently looks astonished and even wearily disgusted at what the players do. They’re coming from a culture that’s alien to him and he doesn’t understand it. But until our culture changes, they won’t and indeed can’t change. And the culture has made them rich and idolised, so why would they change?

It’s easy to get depressed by this state of affairs and just want to win but know that this isn’t likely, though perhaps not absolutely impossible, given cup football’s improbable vagaries. Take it easy on yourself and stop thinking that things will change. I’ve consciously watched them since 1970 and believe me, things can get a lot worse.

Perhaps concentrate on changing how you enjoy football on a weekly basis with its merry-go-round of heroes and villains. Reject the old things you thought were truths and see the bigger picture. Learn to be able to sift understandable hero worship from truth. Most of all, reject the Premier League marketing which warps so many brains into believing their exaggerations and outright lies that do so much harm to truth, beliefs and ambitions.

Enjoy the good bits, take your pleasure where you can, appreciate them but don’t be blinded by them.

And if you’re moaning about the commentator and co-comm, you’ve got at least two options – radio (always the best) and mute; choose one and stop wallowing in your own misery. It’s not that bad but you’re making it worse with your constant mithering.